When I work with business owners on getting their systems and operations streamlined and more efficient, the most common question I get is “How will this impact my revenue?”

Most of us hear “Systems” and think of something insanely boring and irrelevant to the creative work that we’re doing. After all, we created our own business so that we could be as creative as we wanted, right?

But at the end of the day, when you have systems your business runs smoother, you’re less stressed, you can get more done, and that all means that you are able to earn more money with less effort.

Here’s the simple equation I like to use (specifically for service-based businesses):

When you have efficient systems, especially when you work with clients, your clients and customers are happier. They have a better experience with you, they get better results, and they’re excited to work with you.

When your clients have a better experience with you, they’ll be more likely to refer you to their friends.

When you get more referrals, your revenue increases exponentially.

Then those two referrals send five people each to you. Those five people have amazing experiences and send ten people each to you. Those ten people have amazing experiences and send twenty people each to you. (Do you see the pattern yet?)

As you continue to deliver a WOW-worthy experience through the systems you’ve set up, you’ll continue to increase how many clients you’re getting, working with, and wowing. You’re exponentially increasing your referral marketing, which means your income is skyrocketing.

But if you didn’t have systems set up?

You’d deliver a lackluster service.

Your clients would complain about you to their friends.

Those friends will look for someone else without ever having considered you.

You’ll hit an income ceiling and wonder why you can’t bust through it.

You’ll come up with another service.

You’ll book a couple clients, but it won’t be efficient.

And then the cycle just repeats again.

So when you take the time to really think through your systems, to put them in place and make sure that every little thing is accounted for you’ll be able to skyrocket your reputation, your income, and your client experience.

When we think about taking back our time, the first thing that usually comes to mind is hiring someone -- be it a virtual assistant, graphic designer, copywriter, etc.

But there’s actually something else that you can leverage today to start taking back your time: Automations.

Automations are just things that happen automatically in your business -- they take away the need for you to do things manually, and allow certain things to happen no matter if you’re working, traveling, sleeping, or eating.

Just by implementing automations in your business, you’ll be able to stop doing it all yourself, increase your revenue, and reclaim time that has been sunk into your business with no return so far.

Here are a few easy automations you can put in place today that can start to help you reclaim your time:

Put up an autoresponder on your inbox with answers to frequently asked questions / links people will need access to

This allows people who email you to get the information and/or answers to commonly answered questions without you needing to be in your inbox 24/7.

You can also let people know when they can expect an answer from you. This allows you to only check your email during certain days/times, and for the people emailing you to know you’ll get back to them as soon as you can.

Set up a social media scheduling software so your accounts stay active

You can have new content being pushed to your accounts without you having to be manually writing or publishing every single day.

Scheduling software also allows you to pre-write your content and have it sent out on the day you desire. That means less stress and more ease for you!

For most social media platforms you’ll be able to have things post automatically, but Instagram requires you to manually publish the post. You can use a software like Planoly to pre-schedule all of your content, and then spend 2-5 minutes actually posting the image when you get a notification.

Create a separate folder, email address and filter for newsletters in your email so they go into a folder without ever gracing your inbox

If you’re anything like me, you probably subscribe to 50-100+ email newsletters. You love getting all of them, but they clutter up your inbox and are super distracting.By creating an email alias (I use newsletter@indigocolton.com) you can still receive all of the newsletters, but filter them into a separate folder and keep them outside of your main inbox.

You’ll only see the emails that are most important in your inbox, but still see the newsletters whenever you’d like.

Set up a scheduling tool so people can book calls without having to correspond with you directly

When you have a scheduling tool like Acuity set up, you eliminate the countless “what time works for you?” email chain with people.

You send a link and the other person simply books for the time that works best for them. Acuity allows people to select their own time zone and have it automatically convert into your availability, which is perfect when you have clients or colleagues all around the globe.

What automation are you going to set up in your business today? Let me know in the comments below!

When you’re in the first few years of your business, it’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of doing it all yourself. After all, it feels like a Catch-22: you need team members to do the day-to-day work so that you can earn more money, but you need more money to hire the team members you need.

So you keep trying to do it all yourself, figuring that this is the best that things are going to be until you magically increase your revenue.

But what you might not realize is that trying to do it all yourself is actually losing you money every. single. day.

If you’re not sure how, here are five ways that trying to do it all yourself is losing you money:

Working outside of your zone of genius

When you work outside of your zone of genius and try to do #allthethings, it means that you aren’t being efficient with your time. And that means that you aren’t spending the majority of your time on revenue-generating tasks.

One thing that’s stuck with me from working with a network marketing company is the conscious choice to do your IPA’s first -- put your Income Producing Activities first on your to-do list every day.

But as small business owners, we generally put the least income producing activities first. We prioritize perfecting our branding, trying to be on every social media platform, etc. ahead of things like working with our clients, connecting with our community, and developing new offerings.

And when you’re constantly working outside of your zone of genius, it gets much more difficult to know what those IPA’s are for your business. Because you’re stretching yourself so thin across your entire business, you’re out of touch with what actually brings in the revenue.

Working 24/7

When you’re working around the clock, you’re not being compensated for all of the time you’re spending.

We look at 9-5 jobs that pay $10-$15 per hour and scoff, but what is YOUR hourly rate? If you calculated it (revenue in divided by how many hours you’re actually working, I’m willing to bet that it’s coming in under $15/hr.

But if you set strict work times around your business, your hourly rate will start to increase because you’re giving yourself limits around how long you’re going to do certain things for your business during the day.

Not tracking your time

Don’t know how much time you’re spending in your business to calculate your hourly rate? That’s a huge, yet common, thing that I’ve come across when working with online business owners.

When you don’t track your time you have no idea where your time is going. That means that you don’t know where the inefficiencies are, or how to stop time leaks in your business.

And time leaks (like spending 5 hours a day in your inbox, getting sucked into the endless Facebook or Instagram scroll) mean that you are losing out on revenue, and costing your business money.

Getting burned out

Something that we can (unfortunately) all relate to is the feeling of getting burned out. When you are trying to do everything yourself, you are not giving yourself the time or support to show up when you are feeling your best.

This means that you are burning the candle at both ends, and not giving yourself the time to rest so that you can continue to support your business.

And when you get burnt out as someone who is doing it all yourself, you have to take time away from your business without anyone there to support it.

That means that you are losing out on revenue, because nobody is there to do the IPA’s in your business. And unless you’ve preemptively set up a financial cushion, it could be more stressful to not be earning money as you recover from your burnout than it was working yourself into burnout.

Spending money on tools you don’t need

Here’s a hard truth: Most business owners spend thousands of dollars on software and tools that they simply don’t need.

By purchasing the latest fad software, or jumping into lifetime deals because it saves you money (only if you use that tool every day!), you are essentially just bleeding money that could be going to things like:

When you’re the CEO of your own online business, it can be incredibly easy to get stuck in the day-to-day work -- scheduling social media, client management, answering emails, etc.

But it’s incredibly important that you take time to work ON your business, as well. Because you’re the employee, the manager, and the CEO.

That means you are the one deciding the vision for the company, leading the direction that you’re moving towards, and making the major decisions.

So how do you balance both working IN your business and working ON your business? Here are three things you can implement to make that happen:

Schedule out time every week where you are working ON your business

Open up your Google Calendar and block out time every. single. week. where you are doing the big picture visioning for your business. Day-to-day tasks are not allowed!

This is time where you are intentionally stepping into the role of CEO in your business on a regular basis.

Use this time to look at the big picture vision for your company. Do you like the work you’re doing? Are you actively moving towards a way of doing business that aligns with your ideal life?

You can also work on marketing, streamlining and systemizing your business (so you don’t have to spend so much time doing the day-to-day work), and creating new offerings that feel in alignment with where you want your business to go.

Treat these time blocks the same as you would a meeting with a client or a doctor’s appointment -- make them non-negotiable. Your business needs you to show up and do the big picture things!

Schedule out time every week where you are working IN your business

Now that you have the time blocked off to work ON your business, it’s time to do the same for the time you’re going to be working IN your business.

This is when you do the day-to-day tasks: you’re doing client work, hanging out on social media, writing blog posts, etc.

By creating boundaries around when this work happens, you’ll force yourself to not let the day-to-day work take over your life and keep you from doing the bigger picture things.

Treat this time as non-negotiable as well -- these blocks are here to help you, so don’t ignore them or schedule other appointments during them!

Block those times off in your scheduling tool

Now that you have those time blocks in your calendar, it’s time to make sure that they are blocked off in your scheduling tool as well!

If you use something like Acuity they should automatically be blocked off, but it’s important to do a manual double-check.

This makes sure that you won’t be scheduling any other calls or appointments during those times, and you can focus 100% on either working in or on your business.

How do you balance working IN and ON your business? Let me know in the comments below!